A day to remember for WWII vets

World War II veteran Ivan Kennedy visits the Freedom Wall, part of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., during an Honor Flight San Diego trip there with 104 other World War II veterans. He brought a photo of his friend Henry Vavak who was planning on going on the trip, but passed away in the last few weeks. Each of the 4,048 stars on the wall represents 100 American military service members killed or missing during the war.
— Howard Lipin / U-T San Diego

World War II veteran Ivan Kennedy visits the Freedom Wall, part of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., during an Honor Flight San Diego trip there with 104 other World War II veterans. He brought a photo of his friend Henry Vavak who was planning on going on the trip, but passed away in the last few weeks. Each of the 4,048 stars on the wall represents 100 American military service members killed or missing during the war.
— Howard Lipin / U-T San Diego

These are men who fought and won a monumental war, established a new world order, came home and ushered in decades of progress and prosperity for the country they love. They thought they were ready.

But going to the World War II Memorial on Saturday was too much for some of them. It made them cry.

The 105 veterans on an all-expenses-paid Honor Flight trip this weekend from San Diego were treated like heroes wherever they went. Strangers came up and thanked them for their service.

Truth is, all the adoration made some of them uncomfortable. No matter what they did in combat — and there are veterans here from almost every major battle of the war — they know it pales in comparison to the sacrifice they saw so many others make. Everybody here knows somebody who was killed.

Survivor’s guilt. Ken Miles of Del Cerro has it. After his two brothers, both in the Army, were killed in the Philippines during the war, the Marine was pulled off a ship headed to Iwo Jima. The government had a policy against a family losing all of its sons. He served out the war at Camp Pendleton.

“It’s been so many years, but I still think about them,” Miles said Saturday at the memorial, a sprawling tribute to the Greatest Generation located on the National Mall, in between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

He paused and wiped at his eyes. He was standing in front of a wall at the memorial that has 4,038 gold stars on it, one for every 100 U.S. service members killed in the war. Etched in stone at the foot of the wall is this: “Here we mark the price of freedom.”

“In the bus, on the way over, I nearly cried,” said Miles, 87. “I knew it was going to happen eventually.”

He wasn’t the only one overcome with emotion Saturday. Most of the veterans, all in their late 80s or early 90s, have been waiting at least a year to go on one of these flights. Some have been waiting much longer for closure.

Honor Flight San Diego, formed in 2010, is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization that hosts the trips when it has gathered enough donations to fund them. Usually, the group takes about 20 to 30 vets on a commercial flight. This time, thanks to $100,000 in matching grants from two San Diego County contributors, Honor Flight was able to charter a plane.

It was the organization’s biggest contingent ever, which the organizers were happy about because they feel a sense of urgency about their mission: Nationwide, the war’s veterans are dying at a rate of about one every two minutes.

Saturday, the vets — plus about 80 “guardians” who paid their own way — piled into buses for a 10-hour tour of the nation’s memorials. They saw the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam wall, the Korean War Memorial. They watched the changing of the guard at Arlington National Cemetery and toured the museum at the Navy Yard.

The World War II Memorial opened just eight years ago. Few members of Saturday’s group, if any, had seen it. And few expect to ever see it again.

Many of them donated money for its construction, and they openly refer to it as “their” memorial.

“It’s an honor to be here,” Ivan Kennedy said. The 86-year-old resident of Spring Valley was wearing a World War II baseball hat that he usually reserves for Veteran’s Day. But this was a special occasion, he said.

Kennedy brought with him a framed photo of a friend, Henry Vavak. They hadn’t known each other long, just a few months, but they had bonded at a senior center over their shared military experience in the Pacific theater. Kennedy was a crew member on a bomber; Vavak was part of the infantry in the Marine Corps.

When Kennedy was making plans to come on the Honor Flight, he got Vavak to sign up. Then, around Easter, his friend died.

“I told him he was my hero,” Kennedy said Saturday, sitting in a wheelchair and pointing at the photo, which was placed on the frame of a wreath near the gold-star wall.

Kennedy’s guardian on the trip was his son, Gary. Others brought grandchildren. For many of the families, it was an opportunity for talks that had never happened — talks on the plane ride, on the bus, in the hotel.

“I really didn’t know anything about his service until about a week before we came on this trip,“ Gary Kennedy said. “He’s been opening up more, showing me his photo albums. It’s been great.”

Ed Reiff spent time with his son, too. It was a surprise to him. The last time he saw Jack Fleming, his son from a first marriage, was 45 years ago, at Fleming’s wedding. Reiff lives in Simi Valley, Fleming in Pittsburgh.

“It wasn’t animosity” that kept them apart, Fleming said. “It was geography. Life got in the way.”

Reiff’s daughter, who also came on the Honor Flight, set up the Friday night reunion. She called her half-brother a couple of weeks ago and asked him to come. He said yes, even though it meant driving more than four hours from Pittsburgh, meeting briefly with his father, and then turning around and driving home.

“Thank God I was spared during the war,” said Reiff, 87, a machine gunner with the Marines in the Pacific. “This is one of the best days of my life.”

There were other surprises. Dean Cary, an Army vet from Bonsall, turned around at the World War II Memorial to find one of his grandsons, Carlo Romero, who came down from New York. “I wanted to honor my grandfather,” Romero said.

Cary, 87, already had a grandson with him, Nick Romero, who showed respect to all the veterans by wearing his Air Force uniform for the daylong tour. He’s a lieutenant stationed in Nebraska.

“He finally gets to see what he sacrificed for,” said Nick Romero of his grandfather, an Army combat engineer in Europe during the war. “I think it’s hard for him to take it all in.”

One of the day’s most poignant moments came at the Vietnam wall, where George Newton of Fallbrook went looking for a particular name. His son’s.

Newton spent almost 27 years in the Marine Corps and his son Barrie was a Marine, too, when he was killed in May of 1969. He was 19.

At the granite wall, a park docent climbed a ladder to make a pencil rubbing of the name “Barrie M. Newton” on a piece of paper. He handed it to Newton, who thanked him and then walked away.